Newsletter #110
Lee Euler, Editor
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7 Things You Should Know BEFORE
A Doctor Freezes Your Prostate!

I get chills just thinking about it!

Since the early 1990s, doctors have urged thousands of men with prostate problems to avoid traditional surgery by having their prostates frozen. Find out about Big Medicine's latest brainstorm. . .

Continued below. . .


Toxic chemical condemned 8 men to die of prostate cancer
. . .but one of them escaped. Here's how he did it!

John S. watched helplessly as 7 of his Vietnam platoon buddies died of prostate cancer, one by one. They were exposed to chemicals during the war that caused them to get cancer when they reached middle age. Then, in 2002, John found out it was his turn. He got opinions from three different doctors and they all told him the same thing: he'd need a miracle to survive.

John found the miracle he needed. Four years after his diagnosis, he told us, "I am healthy and happy with no symptoms of the disease." He actually wishes he'd gotten the disease sooner so he could have told his Army buddies this secret. It might have saved their lives.

We're ALL exposed every day to chemicals similar to the ones that killed these veterans. A man is just about certain to get prostate cancer if he lives long enough. That means John's life-saving secret is big news for men everywhere. Click here and keep reading. . .


I'm talking about cryotherapy—also called cryosurgery or cryoablation. According to the National Cancer Institute1, this minimally invasive surgery uses controlled freeze and thaw cycles to destroy cancer cells.

As cells are frozen, ice crystals form inside and around them. This process destroys cells through dehydration… drastic changes in the pH levels… or by preventing the flow of red blood cells.

In addition to treating prostate cancer, doctors also use cryotherapy to treat:

  • Abnormal cervical tissue (that can lead to cervical cancer)
  • Breast cancer
  • Kaposi's sarcoma
  • Liver tumors
  • Skin cancer (early stage)

Some members of the medical establishment say cryosurgery is more effective than standard prostate cancer therapies. But like other treatments, cryotherapy comes with some risks…

The good, The bad, and the ugly
news about cryotherapy

To help you weigh the pros and cons, I'm going to share seven important details you should consider. For starters, you should know that:

  1. Needles are involved—According to the Mayo Clinic, cryotherapy requires either general or local anesthesia. So your first needle stick may be to knock you out or numb the area. Next, a doctor inserts needles through the area between your scrotum and anus (the perineum) and into the prostate. An ultrasound probe in the rectum helps guide your doctor to position the needles. As you already know if you're a regular reader, needle biopsies to take tissue samples can spread cancer. The use of needles in cryotherapy looks to me like it could do the same thing.
  2. Both cancerous and non-cancerous tissue may be affected—Once a doctor inserts needles in your prostate, (s)he releases liquid nitrogen or argon gas. The gas circulates and freezes nearby tissue, causing the cancerous cells to burst and die. But the gases can also freeze and destroy normal tissue located near cancer cells!
  3. Side effects include impotence, incontinence, and swelling—Because cryotherapy may freeze tissues beyond the prostate, there is a chance it could damage the nerves that control erections. You may also suffer from an inability to urinate or from sudden urges to do so. Injury to your rectum and reduced bowel function can also occur. And some patients have experienced swelling of the scrotum, scarring, and moderate pelvic pain2!
  4. You might need to repeat the procedure—Patients with recurrent prostate cancer may need to repeat cryotherapy treatments. Although the surgery is minimally invasive and most patients recover quickly—repeating it could increase your risk of experiencing negative side effects.

Now that you're aware of some of the cons to undergoing cryotherapy—you might want to know about a few things touted as positive attributes.

For example, cryotherapy:

  1. May be used to address difficult cases—Inoperable cancers or those that do not respond to standard treatments sometimes respond to cryotherapy. It also can be used for patients whose age or other medical conditions make them ineligible for conventional surgery. Some doctors have also used it on patients for whom radiation therapy has failed.
  2. Costs less than traditional procedures—According to study findings published in the medical journal Urology3, the average cost for a radical prostatectomy was $5,660. In contrast, hospital costs for cryosurgery averaged $4,150—a 26 percent saving.
  3. Boasts an impressive success rate—Over 400 published studies document the clinical value of cryotherapy to treat prostate cancer. Recent studies show 10-year cure rates as high as 90% for low risk patients (probably meaning those whose cancer hadn't spread outside the prostate). This represents the same success rate claimed for surgery or radiation treatments.

In most cases, cryotherapy can be performed as outpatient surgery. In some cases, an overnight stay may be required.

In most cases a doctor can perform the procedure in about two hours. Since there's not much blood loss, pain, or discomfort (so they say), many patients are back on their feet the same day. Many resume a normal routine in just a few days.

Now I'm not going to tell you whether you should or shouldn't have this procedure.

My goal was to provide some facts about the procedure that can help you make an informed decision.

So if you're opposed to going under the knife… and the thought of chemotherapy and radiation turns your stomach, then freezing cancer cells may be an alternative to consider with your medical practitioner.

But if you're a regular reader of this newsletter, you know there are natural, noninvasive ways to get rid of prostate cancer. I summarize the best of them in my Special Report Don't Touch My Prostate!

The patients for whom surgery or cryotherapy will most likely work are early stage cancer patients, and those are precisely the men who can probably get rid of cancer with natural methods. In early stage prostate cancer, the disease hasn't spread outside the prostate.

Plus most men in the early stages have plenty of time to consider their options. It's a very slow-growing disease. In fact, for most men early stage prostate cancer is not much more than a harmless nuisance, and they're better off following a program of "watchful waiting" — just keeping an eye on things.

Before the mania for screening, PSA tests and needle biopsies, most men with prostate cancer didn't know it, and they were just as well off. Nowadays it's an over-diagnosed, over-treated medical condition. Leave well enough alone — but do follow the natural tips in my report to get rid of it.

Admittedly the other ten percent of prostate patients suffer from aggressive, fast-growing cancer, and there's no good test at this point to determine if your cancer is one of the unlucky ten percent. I still say with all honesty that you're better off with the natural methods than the conventional ones. But if you'd like to know the details, take a look at Don't Touch My Prostate.

Frankly, I think most of us can avoid prostate cancer if we do the right things. One of them might be the supplement I wrote about in the last issue. If you missed it, scroll down and take a look now.


Protandim: The Most Important Supplement of Our Time, or Just Another Pricey Pill?

"Arguably the most important supplement of our time." That's what it says on one of the information pages on the web site for the supplement Protandim.

That's a pretty hefty claim, so I looked into it. It's an impressive supplement, although I'm not so sure about whether it's a good value. Let's take a look. . .

Continued below. . .


Ten-year breast cancer survivor was told:
"You'll be dead in a year" (Pssst!! That was 10 years ago!)

Doctors didn't give Wiltrude much hope when they diagnosed her with cancer in the year 2000. Wiltrude, a German psychologist, never thought cancer would happen to her. But it did. And it came as a big shock.

One doctor told her, "You'll be dead in a year." Late stage breast cancer is virtually incurable using conventional treatments. Even M.D.s admit it. They talk about "buying you more time." (Don't count on it. The evidence shows you're better off doing nothing than chemo.)

When Wiltrude told her doctor she was going to try alternative treatments, he said, "You are committing suicide with what you're doing." But she was determined to find a way to beat her cancer.

Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, this European woman came across a book by my good friend Bill Henderson, one of the smartest and wisest people I know when it comes to cancer treatment.

She tried Bill's top, number one recommendation — a gentle treatment you can do at home for just $5.15 a day. What's more, the cost goes down to $3.50 after six weeks because you just need a maintenance dose. And it even tastes good.

Not only has Wiltrude passed the five-year cancer survival mark, she's survived for ten years. We just interviewed her recently for this publication. The radiologist who tests her every year told her, "You're the only one with this kind of result."

You can find out everything about Bill's cancer treatment plan in our Special Report, How to Cure Almost Any Cancer at Home for $5.15 a Day. When I ask him about some of the treatments that top alternative doctors use, Bill sort of shrugs and says, "They're fine, but why bother? My treatment works, you can do it yourself, and it costs practically nothing."

He's coached thousands of cancer patients with all different types and stages of cancer. Most of the people who follow the detailed, specific plan in this Special Report get over their cancer and live for years.

"Almost any kind of cancer is reversible," says Bill. "I never give up on anyone."

Click here and learn all about his amazing cancer protocol.


How Protandim works

Protandim is patented and marketed by a company called LifeVantage Corporation. It reportedly stimulates the body to produce its own antioxidants.

The main ingredients of Protandim are five extracts: milk thistle, green tea, turmeric, bacopa, and ashwagandha root. All five have been shown to have antioxidant-enhancing effects in one form or another.

Milk thistle, for example, has known anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects, as well as protective effects for the liver. Green tea is highly regarded as a source of bioflavonoids, which are well-known for their anti-oxidative and anti-carcinogenic properties.

Turmeric is well-documented for medicinal properties used in Indian and Chinese medicine. I'm impressed with the evidence that it helps prevent and treat some cancers, and I take the active ingredient, curcumin, as one of my daily supplements.

Numerous studies show turmeric is an effective anti-inflammatory, which means it's useful against not only cancer but heart disease, diabetes and joint pain, too. I believe the significant decrease in pain I've experienced in the last couple of years is probably due, in part, to curcumin/turmeric.

Protandim's fourth ingredient, bacopa, is important in Ayurvedic medicine as a cognitive enhancer. It's also believed to scavenge for free radicals (in other words, it's believed to have antioxidant properties). It's claimed that the fifth ingredient, ashwagandha root, helps prolong life. I'm not personally familiar with bacopa or ashwagandha.

The whole point of Protandim is to reduce oxidative stress within the body. Advocates say it does this by increasing the quantity of certain enzymes such as catalase (CAT) and superoxide dismutase (SOD — we wrote about that in Issue #92, available at www.cancerdefeated.com/newsletters).

SOD and CAT, in turn, boost antioxidant activity within the body. The antioxidants then fight off free radicals that result from oxidative stress.

Oxidative stress happens when destructive molecules cause damage to cells. These free radical molecules are what speed up the aging process. They can also initiate the development of diseases like cancer.

Now, the older you get, the more free radicals you have in your body. To make matters worse, as you age you have fewer antioxidants to fight those free radicals. This means less and less protection from problems associated with aging (such as cancer, arthritis, heart disease and other diseases that become more likely, the older you get).

I've often talked about the antioxidants found in food and in conventional supplements, like vitamins A and C. These antioxidants are considered consumable. This means they get used up at a rate of one-to-one as they neutralize free radicals. In effect, they are consumed by the process of destroying free radicals.

Protandim, as I mentioned earlier, stimulates your body to produce more of the special antioxidant enzymes SOD and CAT. It's believed that the antioxidants prompted by these enzymes are catalytic antioxidants. In other words, they don't get used up after attacking free-radicals the way consumable antioxidants do.

According to the Protandim website, "A single daily caplet of Protandim creates a cascade of your body's natural catalytic antioxidants that are able to destroy millions of free radicals per second, on a continuous basis — 24/7."

Some distributors of Protandim claim it reduces oxidative stress within the body by 40%. They also say it slows the aging rate of cells to the levels of a 20-year-old.

Sounds great, especially given that the side effects are mild. The only recorded side effects (besides allergic response) are upset stomach, headache, and a rash on the hands and feet.

What others think and say about Protandim

The supplement has been around for seven years now. It was first formulated by Paul Myhill, who comes equipped with an undergraduate degree in theology and a graduate degree in business.

Another fellow, Dr. Joe McCord, is more or less the "face" of Protandim and was hired to represent the supplement. Myhill stated in one interview that Dr. McCord, who has a good reputation, was hired for marketing purposes.

There have been eight peer-reviewed studies of Protandim, though all but one was done on animals. On the whole, that's pretty good evidence when it comes to a supplement formula.

Two of the studies were sponsored by the manufacturer. Of these two studies, one supported the claim that Protandim increases SOD and catalase levels (though I should note this was a non-randomized, non-controlled trial in humans).

Another study was done at Louisiana State University in conjunction with Dr. McCord, who also serves as Science Director at LifeVantage. The LSU study found Protandim suppresses skin tumor incidence in mice.

A separate study published in the Journal of Free Radical Biology and Medicine showed significant increases in glutathione levels for Protandim-treated cells. Glutathione is an antioxidant known to prevent free radical damage to cells. The renowned Dr. David Williams, editor of Alternatives newsletter, has said your body's level of glutathione is one of the most important indicators of how long you'll live.

Glutathione levels are fairly hard to boost by way of supplements. A simple glutathione supplement doesn't help — you have to eat a precursor to glutathione that the body then converts into the real thing. There aren't that many reliable precursors. So, if Protandim is one of them it could be an especially valuable pill to swallow.

Critics of the supplement don't believe there is any reliable evidence that it has an antioxidant effect. They believe Protandim's effects in the body — whatever those may be -- can come about when you take each of the five ingredients on its own. They point out that doing so is a lot less expensive.

Some doubts about SOD and CAT

The makers of the supplement claim it extends life, but it's not clear whether increasing the production of catalytic enzymes actually increases lifespan. Some scientists think it might even shorten it. Boosting SOD and CAT levels is a fairly new, controversial area. I think it's safe to say most of don't wake up in the morning thinking, "I've got to boost my SOD and CAT levels." Maybe in a few years we will.

But Protandim contains powerful natural extracts and it appears to do no harm. I think there's plenty of evidence to support the benefits of several of the ingredients.

Myhill has commented in interviews that because Big Pharma and the FDA don't allow supplement marketers to claim their product can treat a medical problem, they have to rely on the scientific literature to make those claims for them. Myhill states, "Most people can then make the connection and understand how Protandim can be a positive part of their health regime."

It's kind of expensive

The supplement is sold by LifeVantage Protandim distributors. They operate through what they call "network marketing." Really, it's multi-level marketing but the name was changed since MLM schemes have developed a bad reputation.

Protandim costs around $45 for 30 pills if you buy it online (roughly $1.50 per pill). Yet, you can buy each of the five ingredients on Amazon for only a fraction of that: Milk thistle for 5.8 cents per pill, turmeric for 4 cents per pill, green tea for 5.3 cents per pill, ashwaganda for 8 cents a pill, and bacopa for 11 cents a pill. (All prices are accurate as of this writing; I made no effort to comparison shop for the best price. Nor did I check out the reliability of different suppliers. They could be selling you corn starch, for all I know.)

But, those warnings aside, you could buy all five ingredients for about 34 cents a dose. Compare this to the $1.50 per pill you spend if you buy Protandim directly. Is it worth it? You could save up to $400 a year by purchasing the ingredients individually.

This is a game I could play all day long with almost every supplement formula on the market. Of course, it's easier to buy the formula than the individual ingredients. One pill and you're done. Protandim comes recommended by some people I respect. Hopefully, it's made with high quality ingredients in the right doses. If you've got the money and prefer the convenience, by all means buy the pre-mixed formula.

Most supplement makers charge many times the manufacturing cost of the ingredients. What you're really paying for is the information they send you. They've done the research and the thinking for you. You want to read up on all these herbs and buy them individually for pennies? Go right ahead.

Very likely without the supplement marketers you'd never hear of beneficial herbs like milk thistle, turmeric and green tea extract. But the service doesn't come free.

Kindest regards,

Lee Euler,
Publisher


Footnotes:

1 National Cancer Institute. 2003. Cryosurgery in Cancer Treatment: Questions and Answers. Retrieved May 3, 2010 from http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Therapy/cryosurgery
2 Bales GT, Williams MJ, Sinner M, et al. Short-term outcomes after cryosurgical ablation of the prostate in men with recurrent prostate carcinoma following radiation therapy. Urology. 1995; 46: 676-680. [PubMed]
3 Benoit RM, Cohen JK, Miller RJ. Comparison of the hospital costs for radical prostatectomy and cryosurgical ablation of the prostate. Urology 1998; 52: 820-4


Additional Resources:

Galil Medical. 2009, December 30. Cryotherapy for prostate cancer. Retrieved May 2, 2010 from http://www.prostate-cancer-institute.org/prostate-cancer-treatment/cryosurgery.html

Mayo Clinic. 2010, April 8. Cryotherapy for prostate cancer. Retrieved May 2, 2010 from http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/prostate-cancer-cryotherapy/PC00022

Rees, J., Patel, B. MacDonagh, R. and Persad, R. Cryosurgery for Prostate Cancer. British Journal of Urology International 2003. Retrieved May 3, 2010 from http://www.urotoday.com/prod/pdf/reviews/BJU4_apr2004.pdf


References:

Budgets are Sexy: Are Protandim Pills a Scam?
http://www.budgetsaresexy.com/2011/03/are-protandim-pills-a-scam/

How Protandim Works. http://www.protandim.com/

Inside Protandim: The Paul Myhill Interview, by LifeVantage Network.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/lifevantage/blog/2009/03/09/inside-protandim-the-paul-myhill-interview
Lazy Man and Money: Protandim Scam?
http://www.lazymanandmoney.com/lifevantageprotandim-scam/
Nelson, Sally K.; Bose, Swapan K.; Grunwald, Gary K.; Myhill, Paul; McCord, Joe M. (2006).
"The induction of human superoxide dismutase and catalase in vivo: A fundamentally new approach to antioxidant therapy". Free Radical Biology and Medicine 40 (2): 341-7. doi:10.1016/j.freeradbiomed.2005.08.043. PMID 1641341
Science-Based Medicine: Protandim: Another Kind of Antioxidant.
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/protandim-another-kind-of-antioxidant/

Wikipedia: Protandim, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protandim

Velmurugan, K; Alam, J; McCord, J; Pugazhenthi, S (2009).
"Synergistic induction of heme oxygenase-1 by the components of the antioxidant supplement Protandim". Free Radical Biology and Medicine 46 (3): 430-40. doi:10.1016/j.freeradbiomed.2008.10.050. PMID 19056485.

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Editor in Chief: Lee Euler Contributing Editors: Mindy Tyson McHorse, Carol Parks, Roz Roscoe Marketing: Ric McConnell Information Technology Advisor: Michelle Mato Webmaster: Steve MacLellan Fulfillment & Customer Service: Joe Ackerson and Cami Lemr


Health Disclaimer: The information provided above is not intended as personal medical advice or instructions. You should not take any action affecting your health without consulting a qualified health professional. The authors and publishers of the information above are not doctors or health-caregivers. The authors and publishers believe the information to be accurate but its accuracy cannot be guaranteed. There is some risk associated with ANY cancer treatment, and the reader should not act on the information above unless he or she is willing to assume the full risk.

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